Mostly he was the one who slept in that chair. He always started by reading The Daily Record, the local paper out of Wooster. It was delivered in the late afternoons then, and it was still a full-size broadsheet, and he read it after supper. He tried, anyway. He liked to recline back, just to relax, of course. The paper started out crisply propped on his belly, one hand on each side, and he managed through the front page and the letters to the editor. If one of the local cranks had gotten a letter into print, he’d read that one aloud. Deeper into section A, the paper started to sag. The clatter of dishes in the sink brought the paper back up a few times, but eventually the newsprint settled gently over his face, where it rested until he snuffled himself awake with a half-baked snore. The progressive rustle of newspaper was the soundtrack of my childhood evenings, and it was never a problem, because it was always possible to sneak the back section away and read the funnies.

We were a reading family. At least once, it was suggested to my mother that she let her children read too many books. Where else would we have Gotten Such Ideas? I’m not sure what she thought about that — the judgment of others is never exactly fun, even if you’re pretty sure they’re wrong — but it didn’t inspire her to remove any of the books from the house, or stop taking me to the library to check out stacks of books I could barely carry out the door. We didn’t have a television, so I missed out on the Brady Bunch, but I got Anne of Green Gables and Across Five Aprils and all the Newbery Medal winners I could find in our small library. I don’t feel deprived.

There were bookshelves in the living room, near the dozing chair, but there were books on my parents’ bedside tables, too, and in every bedroom in the house. The small cabinet in the front entry was stuffed with Janette Oke novels and other wholesome entertainment. When I had run through all the library books in the house, I plopped down there and rummaged through for something I hadn’t read in awhile.

Still, I don’t remember anything in the house being off limits. Maybe my parents hid some books from me, but everything visible was up for grabs. In elementary school, I read the encyclopedia. I skipped around from topic to topic, looking up anything I’d found interesting in the last entry I’d read. It was Wikipedia rabbit-holing without the screen. There was even a book on end-times theology that gave me nightmares. That one might have disappeared for a while after I appeared at my parents’ bedside in the middle of the night too often. I had that nightmare often enough that at least once I was afraid to wake them up and I went to lie in front of my brother’s door instead.

So despite it being my father’s chair, I suppose it wasn’t all that unusual to find one of the kids in occupation, reading and dozing in fine family tradition. Someone made a real decision to take that picture. Cameras were not at our fingertips — as close as the nearest smartphone — in 1980, and also I was the fifth child. I’m glad they did.

Because really, I was awfully cute.

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2019/02/10/sleepy-reader/feed/27132Stuck In the Middlehttps://thecircusishere.com/2019/02/03/stuck-in-the-middle/
https://thecircusishere.com/2019/02/03/stuck-in-the-middle/#commentsMon, 04 Feb 2019 02:26:35 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7121Continue reading Stuck In the Middle]]>Today as I sit here and write, I’m okay. But I’m going to share something with you that I created when I was not okay.

Last week, I was really upset. We ran into a little red tape with some of Levi’s medications, and it looked like we were going to end up paying thousands of dollars more than we had been/were supposed to have to pay. I was trying to remain calm, the operative word being “trying.” I reached a point at which all of the phone lines I could be calling were closed for the evening and there wasn’t anything productive left to do, and I did not have a good answer. I decided to expend my nervous energy figuring out why I was making end-of-the-world noises about a situation that, while upsetting, was not in fact the end of the world. I made a Venn diagram, I guess because that’s what stressed-out nerds do.

This is a visual representation of my experience as a parent of a child with chronic illness.

I sent it to a few friends that also have kids with different special/medical needs. “I’m stuck in the middle today,” I said. I could have added that I was not okay, but they didn’t need me to spell that out. I asked what they thought I should call the middle section. One suggested “my life.” A couple of the suggestions were not shareable on this PG-rated blog.

I hate the way I react to insurance blips and bad coughs. It is one of the things I like least about myself. I am, generally speaking, a competent person. I ought to be able to manage a prescription problem. I ought not to run around Chicken Little-ing every time Levi develops a cough that requires oral antibiotics. I hate that I cry on the phone to strangers, and to nurses that have been taking these calls from me since Levi was born. Oddly, my Venn diagram helps me understand why I act the way that I do.

I am always somewhere on this chart. Always. I mostly hang out in the green area at the bottom, nagging Levi to make sure he’s getting all the medication in the nebulizer (“All of it, buddy! I don’t want to find a bunch of stuff in there when I clean it!”) and wondering if Paul and/or the nurses and/or the front desk people at the cystic fibrosis center are going to think I’m one of Those Moms if I call again about his cough.

I swing up into the orange section with some regularity. I swing way, way up there when someone well-known in the CF community dies, or when a friend’s child is hospitalized. I bring myself back down out of the orange zone with deep breathing and mindfulness and prayer. Mostly. I land in the orange zone more than I’d like.

So when the blue zone sucks me in with an insurance problem or a medication that the pharmacy can’t get in stock, I’m never just in the blue. I’ve been dragged over and up, and there I am in the middle, freaking out at at a level 9 over a level 4 problem, and hating myself because I’m not a calmer person. The middle of that Venn is a rotten place to be.

I got help with the red tape the next morning. All is well. I’m back in the green zone, flirting with the orange line.

But I’ve been thinking about my Venn. I created it because I was mad and I’m not allowed to throw temper tantrums, but it’s stuck with me. We all have a Venn diagram. Yours has different labels than mine. I hope when you’re in the middle of yours, you can give yourself a little grace. I hope I can learn to do the same.

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2019/02/03/stuck-in-the-middle/feed/27121More About the Snowhttps://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/27/more-about-the-snow/
https://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/27/more-about-the-snow/#commentsMon, 28 Jan 2019 01:49:33 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7113Continue reading More About the Snow]]>When we ventured out of the house for the first time after last weekend’s snow, I wasn’t planning to trek anywhere except in and out of the gym parking lot, which I hoped was plowed and salted. Paul drove us all out the lane slowly, testing the conditions. “Oh, stop!” I said as we approached the road. “I need a picture.” Mostly it was the sky, I think. The texture of it.

I crunched across the road and tested the snow at the edge. I couldn’t see where the ditch was – everything had filled up with snow and looked level. I shrugged and stepped in. Carefully. The drop off came at about three steps, and I went thigh-deep. I didn’t fall until a few steps later when I was almost up on the level and getting careless. This was the point at which, I was to hear later, Paul said, “Oh, man. I really hope I don’t have to go get her.” He’d thought, when I popped out of the car and did a slide-step across the road, that not being able to see where the ditch was would mean that I wouldn’t try to cross it.

The problem is that all the best pictures are on the other side of the ditch.

I popped up, conscious that at least three people had watched me faceplant into a snowdrift, brushed off, and waved back at the car. I couldn’t tell whether anyone saw me, but I’d tried. I stomped around a little more to find a stable spot in the field, and took some pictures.

Even there, the snow was over the tops of my boots. I might need better boots.

Despite the cold toes and numbing fingers, I’m glad I jumped the ditch.

When we came back a few hours later, we stopped again (Paul is very patient) and I followed the tracks from my previous jaunt to get another shot. All the clouds were gone, the dense, fluffy blanket blown away by the winter wind. The sky had put on blue ombre instead.

Different. Just as good, though, I think.

Which one do you like better? And if you feel like saying so, why?

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/27/more-about-the-snow/feed/47113Lug Nuts and Snowhttps://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/21/lug-nuts-and-snow/
https://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/21/lug-nuts-and-snow/#commentsMon, 21 Jan 2019 23:41:56 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7091Continue reading Lug Nuts and Snow]]>This weekend has been a little vacation from reality, and we didn’t even have to travel. Friday night was more or less normal. We heard snow was coming, but it’s always hard to say whether the promised snow will actually arrive. I don’t blame the forecasters; as far as I can tell, weather fronts act a bit like children. It’s impossible what predict precisely what they’ll do next, and they delight in making you look foolish.

Saturday morning I sang at a funeral, and the snow began during the service. I made haste slowly and arrived home with the expectation that we might not leave the house at all until Tuesday morning, since everybody had the day off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We emerged this Monday afternoon, and made our way to the gym to work off the beginning pangs of cabin fever. Time in between seemed elastic. At least once, I realized I didn’t know for sure what day it was. It wasn’t that it was so long to be in the house. I think it was the lack of schedule. We had literally nowhere to be. I wasn’t sure how to act.

Saturday afternoon, Paul made good on a long-standing threat and made me learn how to change a tire. (As a bonus, I now have snow tires on my car, just in time to commute on snow-covered roads this week. ) I like to think of myself as a capable person, but I didn’t even know where to start. I could feel bad about this, I guess, but no one had ever shown me. The boys were also required in tire-changing class. Levi has helped with tires before and was happy enough to run the electric impact wrench because who doesn’t love a loud power tool? Elias was not at all interested but participated under duress.

Honestly, I am going to try very hard to have flat tires only when Paul is available, or failing that, Levi. He’s better at it than I am. I can still lift heavier stuff than he can, so I can handle the tires while he runs the wrench. But I am much less helpless in that area than I was 72 hours ago. I suggested that we repeat the exercise in the spring when the snow tires come off to see how much Elias and I have retained. Paul was very proud of me for thinking of it. Elias attempted to slay me with his eyes.

When Elias and I went back inside, I stopped him before he ran off. “You know,” I said, “I didn’t really want to spend time this afternoon getting dirty and dragging tires around either.” He looked mildly surprised.

“But I did it because it’s a good idea to know how,” I said, looking hard at his mouth as it opened on the beginning of an argument. “What if you and I were somewhere by ourselves and got a flat tire? Wouldn’t it be nice to know what to do instead of freaking out?”

I think it was the “what if” that got him. This child can think up more disastrous “what if” scenarios than anyone I know, including me. What if we got robbed and we woke up and then they killed us because we saw their faces, Mom? If you have an answer to this one that is not, “Well, we’d be dead,” can you let me know? Anyway. He’s familiar with the construct, and I think he liked having an actual answer to a what if. He nodded slowly.

“But we won’t know what to do,” I said, “unless we do the part we don’t like.” Long pause. Nod.

And doesn’t that just stink? There are so many parts we don’t like, parts during which we’d much rather be inside under a blanket reading. Parts that don’t pay off until much later, and maybe never.

But this is one of the things I am hoping to give my children, along with the skills to make their own food and clean a toilet (I am SO MUCH FUN at parties). The necessary skills to change a tire, yes, but more importantly, the fortitude to choose to do the hard thing now.

And if I learn it along the way myself, well, that’s a bonus.

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/21/lug-nuts-and-snow/feed/27091Intentionhttps://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/13/intention/
https://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/13/intention/#commentsSun, 13 Jan 2019 22:14:50 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7078Continue reading Intention]]>I did not make any resolutions for the New Year. I’m not a fan of resolutions. They feel exactly like the perfectionism I’ve fought against for so long. The minute I miss a day at the gym, it is over. The day my weigh-in comes in over the number from the carefully planned trajectory I must follow in order to lose X pounds by June 1, I have failed. I cannot keep up, and I cannot fix what I have already ruined. Why bother? I may as well eat the entire bag of Doritos and sleep in tomorrow morning instead of going to lift, I think, since I’m obviously terrible at everything. I’m going to fail, so I may as well wallow.

It felt like resolutions made me worse, not better. So for many years I ignored the whole thing.

However, toward the end of 2018 I heard rumblings from people who were picking a word for the new year. Courage was one I heard. Strength. Faith. As I thought about the idea, it seemed like it might work for me. A set of strict rules I can’t do, but a guiding principle? That sounds like something I can work with.

I mulled it over for a while. None of the words I’d heard so far seemed quite right for me. Eventually, I decided to think about what I didn’t think was going well and see if I could think of something to make up the deficit. After some thought, I came up with “intention.” I think I’ve been going along and doing whatever’s next without thinking about it too much. I haven’t been doing some things that I really do want to do.

I bought myself a little sign and put it on the bathroom counter, where I’ll see it first thing every morning, as soon as I get my contact lenses in and start seeing more than large blurry shapes.

So, you ask, how’s it going? Eh. Medium.

I started writing this post on January 6. I didn’t finish it that day. On the other hand, you’re reading it now, so I did finish eventually. That’s something.

I finished reading a book today. It wasn’t a long book, and it took me weeks. But it was a book I wanted to read, and I managed to eke out enough time from my kids and my job and the terrifying expectations I have for myself to sit down and relax and read. the. book. When I finished, I sat for a minute soaking up the feeling, and I decided I want more of that. Audiobooks and ebooks are not going away for me, but I miss reading book books.

I had coffee with a friend the other day. I don’t see her enough, and when we did the we-should-get-coffee thing a few weeks ago, I suggested a time. On purpose.

My husband and I went out to dinner last night and had a conversation about some decisions we’ve been trying to make. It’s far too easy to float along and do whatever the easiest thing is that will get us through that day. But it doesn’t get us where we want to go. So we talked about it. We’ll talk again.

I got up this morning and realized that my eyes had started to skip over my little sign. We do this. We arrive at work with no memory of having driven there, because the route is so familiar that our brains don’t register the journey. But I don’t want my intentions to become part of my mental wallpaper. I moved the sign. When I no longer see it in that location, I’ll move it again.

I’ll likely forget and go weeks without thinking about it. When that happens, I intend to stop and think and move my sign so it catches my eyes, and begin again. I’ve never done this before, the word thing. I’m a little nervous it’s going to go like resolutions do. But I’m hoping that in 2019 I can be a little kinder than before, even to myself.

At least that’s what I intend.

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2019/01/13/intention/feed/17078Transitionshttps://thecircusishere.com/2018/11/25/transitions/
https://thecircusishere.com/2018/11/25/transitions/#commentsSun, 25 Nov 2018 17:06:28 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7061Continue reading Transitions]]>I was driving home through the dusk and I got a call from Paul. “If you can,” he said, “get home. They’re harvesting the soybeans and you can get a picture of the combine with the tree.”

My whole family is on alert now for this kind of stuff. I didn’t even do it on purpose, but the children will come running through the house to find me if there’s a nice sunset. “Mom! Come quick!” they yell. “You have to take a picture!”

I didn’t break any traffic laws, but I hurried. I pulled in at the end of our lane just in time. The light was going fast, and the combine had cleared everything but a narrow strip of crops on the far side of the field, near the still-standing corn. I wasn’t dressed for it, but I hopped the ditch anyway and hiked a little way into the field, standing just far enough away to avoid alarming the combine operator. Wondering what a crazy woman is doing watching you harvest soybeans in twenty-degree weather is one thing; wondering if she’s running into the path of your enormous machine is another.

It took a little while. The combine was heading away from me when I first stumbled out there, and the shots I took were intriguing. Sort of. But they weren’t right. I’m not really a photographer. I don’t understand much about composition and even less about lighting, so I operate entirely on my gut. Something just wasn’t right. I waited.

I waited some more. The sky behind me turned shades of hot pink and dull lavender, and I wondered if I was shooting in the wrong direction. It was really cold, and I didn’t even have gloves. It’s a long field, and combines don’t operate at road speed. Just when I’d started to wonder if he was offloading into a wagon somewhere out of my field of vision, the big green machine lumbered back over the hill and came back toward me.

This was better. The oncoming lights of the combine were interesting, but it still wasn’t what I wanted. For one thing, the dust coming off the combine was obscuring the view of the tree. Still, I kept shooting — digital photography is a beautiful thing for bumblers like me — and then stood shifting my weight, trying to stay warm, wondering if I’d really run out into the freezing, dimming evening to feel so unsatisfied.

He turned again, and there it was. It wasn’t quite right yet, but I could see it coming. I tapped away as the combine progressed back toward the tree, kicking up dust behind it and picking up the last narrow row of crops left in the field. I checked the shots on the screen to be sure, but I already knew. I’d gotten what I wanted.

I didn’t share it right away, this picture of a familiar place in transition, and I couldn’t have told you why. I suppose that again, it didn’t feel quite right. I sent Paul a shot so he knew I’d listened and gotten home on time, and then I tucked it away in the back of my mind for nearly two weeks.

When Paul called me that night, I was on my way home from my new job. I’m no longer working at the church we’ve attended for fifteen years. I’m full-time now, an office manager at a counseling center. I have a commute. I have new coworkers to get to know, and new information and processes to absorb.

This is all good. It’s the right direction for our family at this stage. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been unsettled, that we haven’t been kicking up some dust. We talked with the boys before the new job started, and they knew things would be a little different. We prepared as much as we could, but change is always hard. So much of the landscape is familiar, but our focus is narrowed to what’s changing. There have been moments of standing in the deepening dusk, fingers freezing, wondering if this was a good idea. We’ve had some rough days. We’ll probably have some more, but we’re figuring it out, all of us together. It isn’t quite right yet, but I can see it coming.

Looking at this shot, I can’t help but think back to the shots I took earlier this year, my friend Peggy standing in a field of green, the tree in full leaf behind her, the sun warm on our shoulders. The field after harvest looks bleak in comparison. And yet the harvest is the whole point. Without the harvest, the field would never be planted, and the sea of green growing things would never exist.

Change. Grief. Transition. So often, these things feel like a stripping away of all the beautiful things in our lives. But I wonder if we can learn to think of these times as a harvest, a gleaning of knowledge, and strength, and resilience. A time to marvel at the stark beauty of bare branches fracturing the winter sky. A long, quiet gathering of possibility, waiting for the sun, and the full, flowering riot of late spring.

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]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2018/11/07/2019-calendars-available-for-order/feed/07040Dirtballshttps://thecircusishere.com/2018/10/22/dirtballs/
https://thecircusishere.com/2018/10/22/dirtballs/#respondMon, 22 Oct 2018 19:41:06 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7012Continue reading Dirtballs]]>My friend Tim grew up with a houseful of brothers. He likes to tell me stories about the shenanigans they thought up when they were young. I find his stories amusing, and also terrifying. There are probably things a mom doesn’t need to know until her children are safely into their 30s and can no longer be injured or disciplined.

One of the stories I’ve heard a few times is about that time long ago when Tim and his brothers decided to throw dirt clods at the garage door. Probably they were trying to show off to each other in some fashion, but he can’t remember why they started. They kept after it, though. It was fun. Soon, the white garage door was well speckled with brown dirt, and the boys’ arms were worn out. They wandered off in search of some other kind of trouble. Hours later, their mother discovered what they’d been up to. Tim and his brothers were very sad for some time after that.

Tim admitted that he probably knew it was a terrible idea. That happened all the time, he said. They’d think of something, know they were going to pay dearly for it, and do it anyway. “I know,” he said, “that you want to ask the boys why all the time.” This is true. WHY would you throw your barn boots in the swimming pool? WHY would you soap the bathroom floor and slide around naked like penguins? WHY would pick your brother’s nose while he was sleeping? WHY? WHYYYYYYYYYY?

Tim leaned in. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “They don’t know. They have no idea why they do these things. There’s no point in asking.”

I can see the wisdom in this and I have tried to stop asking. I really have. It’s hard not to when the imaginings of their confused little brains result in property damage and/or minor injury with some regularity, and all of it could be avoided with a little forethought and common sense. But I am trying.

On Sunday, when I walked by the front door, I noticed that one of the sidelight windows was dirty. Like, really dirty. Like maybe the dog was digging in the garden and then smeared dirt around on the window when he was trying to get someone to open the door.

We don’t have a dog.

Upon opening the door to examine the window, I discovered more dirt. I stepped back. The front door, sidelights, and surrounding siding were covered in dirt clods. Thanks to Tim, I did not have to wonder how this might have happened. I stepped back into the house, where Paul was trying to herd Levi over to the couch to start his evening treatments and Elias was reading on the big chair.

“Were you,” I said carefully to the assembly at large, “throwing dirt clods at the front door?”

“IT WASN’T JUST ME!” Levi yelled, as Elias tried to simultaneously sink into the upholstery and protest that it wasn’t his idea.

I took a breath. “Did you do this anywhere else?” They had. You have three guesses, and the first two don’t count. Tim is a modern-day prophet.

I do not have a picture of any of this to share with you. I was too mad for photography. Here is a picture of the little darlings on a day when I did not consider running away to Fiji. I’m sure they were plotting.

Levi’s treatments were postponed for cleanup of the front door area and garage door. The boys protested that they weren’t tall enough to reach a lot of the dirt. “Perhaps you should have thought of that when YOU WERE THROWING IT,” I said. “Figure it out.” Paul, doubtless envisioning ladders perched precariously on chairs and the bumper of the truck, went outside to supervise.

You may be impressed to know that during this whole debacle I did not once ask why. I may, however, have wailed, “But what could possibly have made you think this was a good idea?” There was no answer.

Testosterone poisoning, I think, is the only real answer. As Paul has said more than once: The short ones? With all the testosterone? You can’t trust ’em an inch.

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2018/10/22/dirtballs/feed/07012Running Awayhttps://thecircusishere.com/2018/10/10/running-away/
https://thecircusishere.com/2018/10/10/running-away/#respondWed, 10 Oct 2018 16:18:19 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=7002Continue reading Running Away]]>I ran away again this week. I ran to a place on Lake Erie that Paul and I had visited more than ten years ago, because it’s the offseason and mid-week and therefore not prohibitively expensive for a place with a little piece of private beach.

I sat in one of the Adirondack chairs this morning and watched the colors change in the sunrise.

Lest that pretty picture tempt you into thinking everything was perfect — remember that nothing is the way it looks on Facebook — you should also know that the mosquitos were obsessed with my ankles, and none of the cottages have air conditioning. I hate to be hot, but I figured I’d be fine in October. I usually would, but as a friend of mine said the other day, we really need to call this month Augtober this year. So I arrived and the cottage was stuffy and hot in the way of old buildings in the late summer and the late evening, and I actually thought about driving home so I could get a good night’s sleep.

I did not go home. I stayed, and I sat around a fire later that evening with two people I’d never met and exchanged stories until it was late. By the time I picked my way carefully across the grass in the dark and opened the screen door of my cottage, it was cool inside.

I couldn’t write after dark because bugs were all over the light of my laptop screen, so when it was dark I read for a while and then went to bed. I took a couple of naps. I found a coffee shop that doesn’t look very interesting from the outside but inside looks as though you have wandered into the living room of someone who has excellent taste in comfy leather couches and doesn’t mind if you sit there half the day pecking away at your keyboard and nursing the caffeine they just happened to whip up for you. In case you dropped by.

I wrote a little. I read some things I’ve been wanting to read, not to improve myself or learn anything in particular, but just for the heck of it. It was nice. I enjoyed myself. But I felt a little guilty. I always feel a little guilty if I’m not being productive in some measurable way. I don’t know if that’s Swiss Anabaptist upbringing or current busy-ness culture or something else, but it’s embedded deep in my soul.

Paul called sometime during the second evening to discuss a kid thing. Runaway or not, I’m still Mom. I lay on the bed and watched the ceiling fan break up the pattern of the stucco as we talked it over. As we were winding down, he said, “You sound good.”

“I do?” I said. “How do I sound?”

“Just … good. Relaxed. Like you’re not worrying about the next thing.”

Oh.

I’m not home yet. I’m sitting in that great coffeeshop I told you about. I really needed another one of their frozen white mochas. But I’m going to go home soon. Levi had a field trip today, and he was supposed to wear clothes appropriate for outdoors. I have no idea what he’s wearing. I have no idea what the house looks like. I don’t know if everyone remembered their lunches for the past two days while I’ve been gone. I don’t, heaven help me, know if they’ve changed their underwear in the last 48 hours.

And … it’s fine. If no one remembered their lunch today, they also won’t starve. Levi with neither freeze nor suffer heat stroke, no matter what fool thing he decided to wear on the way out the door. If the house is trashed, we’ll clean it up. But probably, all of those things happened on schedule anyway. (Except maybe the clean underwear.)

“Things happen without my direct supervision,” I texted my sister yesterday. “Who knew?” It feels good to let my shoulders descend from somewhere up around my ears. Seems I sound good that way, too.

Lifelong habits are hard to break. I cannot promise that I will stop supervising everything and worrying myself silly over whatever the next thing is.

But I will try.

]]>https://thecircusishere.com/2018/10/10/running-away/feed/07002The Unexpected Grace of Pumpkinshttps://thecircusishere.com/2018/09/30/the-unexpected-grace-of-pumpkins/
https://thecircusishere.com/2018/09/30/the-unexpected-grace-of-pumpkins/#commentsSun, 30 Sep 2018 22:48:18 +0000https://thecircusishere.com/?p=6987Continue reading The Unexpected Grace of Pumpkins]]>My husband Paul and I took a body blow at the end of one September. We’d had a baby boy in adoptive placement in our home for two months, thinking he would be ours forever, and then one day we knew he wouldn’t. We surrendered him back to the arms of the young woman who had borne him on a Saturday night, along with the hopes and dreams of what our lives would be like, the three of us together. It was my worst day.

The next weeks and months were bleak and shot through with pain, and the suffering was not contained to our household. Our extended family grieved. So did our friends. People at our church hurt for us, along with the people in the church where both of us had grown up, even though we no longer attended there. It’s awkward, the suffering you feel for someone else. You can’t take on the pain yourself, even if you would, and it’s hard to know what to do. Casseroles are good, but if the freezer is full, what else is there?

My brother called from Toronto. It was up to us, he said, but a change in location might do us some good. Just to stare at different walls, and to sit in different chairs that held no memories. We were welcome to come for a weekend, or as long as we liked. I talked it over with Paul. I wasn’t sure. I’m not a great traveler at my best, and I was so far from my best I couldn’t even remember what that looked like. Paul thought we should go. Everyone in that house knew what was happening. We wouldn’t have to explain anything. We wouldn’t have to pretend, and he’d do all the driving. I agreed, mostly because I was too weary to argue. It was mid-October, and the next weekend worked for everyone, so I packed some bags.

The day before we left, Wendy called. She was first my friend in high school band, and then she’d married my cousin Marty. After Paul and I got engaged, she and Marty invited us to their church, and it had become our church too. Wendy could call me when other people were afraid to. Jana from that congregation had been in touch and asked what her family could do for us. “What do you need?” Wendy said. “I know you don’t really need food, but is there something else they could do?”

I was sitting at the low counter in the farmhouse kitchen staring at the window opposite, over the double stainless sink. The window was filthy, and the dishes in the sink were stacked like a Jenga game. The next time someone walked by the whole thing was probably going to topple, but I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. “I don’t know,” I said, and what I meant was who gives a crap.

“Well,” Wendy said, regrouping. “Let me think what they do. I think their kids are really into sports, but that doesn’t help.” She paused again. I was quiet, wondering how soon I could decently hang up and go lie down again to cry.

“Oh!” Wendy said. “Jana likes to do outdoor stuff, and her mom is a big gardener. How’s your yard doing?”

My yard was terrible. In a good year, we manage to keep the lawn mowed most of the time and not kill off the perennials that someone else had planted. It wasn’t a good year. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Could they at least mow for you?” Wendy persisted. “When you go away this weekend?” The dense cloud of depression in my head shifted a little and I recognized that having someone else mow the lawn meant that Paul wouldn’t have to. I certainly wasn’t going to.

“Yeah,” I said. “Actually that would be good, if they mowed the lawn.”

“Great!” Wendy was delighted. “I’ll let them know.” She disconnected before I could change my mind. I told Paul about it when he got home that day and didn’t think about it again.

We went to Toronto. We stared at different walls for a few days. We talked to our delightful niece. I tried to be subtle about not holding our eighteen-month-old nephew much. He wasn’t a newborn, but still. We stayed with my brother and our sister-in-law, and we had dinner with their relatives that lived close by. Everyone was kind, and no one made us talk about anything. They pretended it was normal to come around a blind corner in the house and find a woman crying on the piano bench. They patted my shoulder and walked away. Sometimes they came back with hot tea.

As we looped homeward around the east end of Lake Erie, I felt dread creeping back. Time away from our house was not a cure. But it had been a respite. I wasn’t ready for it to be over. My shoulders tightened up in increments as we crossed the border to New York, then Pennsylvania, and finally back into Ohio. I let out a massive sigh, and Paul reached over to take my hand. It didn’t matter if I was ready. The days marched on, work was calling, and the neighbors couldn’t take care of the dog forever. At the end of the journey, we stopped at the road to get the mail we’d missed. I put the envelopes and flyers in my lap and turned my eyes down as Paul eased off the brake and drove back the lane.

When we turned and pulled toward the garage, though, I noticed that things looked … different. It took me a beat to remember that someone had been coming by to mow the lawn. They’d mowed the lawn, for sure, but they’d done more than that. The whole yard was cleaned up; the twigs that had blown out of the old maples in a windstorm had been picked up, and the hostas and shrubs up by the house were somehow less wild. The tiny front porch had been carefully swept. At the edge, by the railing, there were a few pumpkins and a pot of mums.

I cried. Again. I couldn’t help it. I knew they were going to mow the grass, and the yard cleanup was an extension of that, really. I was grateful for both, even through the fog of my depression and grief. But the pumpkins and the mums weren’t about lifting the burden of chores. Pumpkins on the porch were about tender care, and belief in the power of beauty. If the yard could go from a scruffy mess to a pretty place in just a couple of days like that, maybe there was hope for the house, if I washed some of the dishes. Maybe there was even hope for me.

I was not healed that day, as if by magic. I was still a wreck, and it was still a long road back to being mostly okay. But I was open, a little, to the possibility that things might not always be so bad. I could see the ways that people around me were reaching out, even if I wasn’t able to reach back. And so we pulled into the garage and I got out of the car. I was ready to be home. I was ready to take a small step forward, made humble and made hopeful by the unexpected grace of pumpkins.